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 streamdragon wrote:

Because they have 30+ years of units to try to balance?
.

Except that isn't the case.

I mean, I know those Fimir and Chaos Dwarves have always been tricky to nail down, but essentially the only units needing any balancing should be anything that slipped the net the Edition they were introduced, and decent play testing should keep that to a minimum.

That's assuming a professional, structured approach to the game design process, of course.

It doesn't take 30 years to balance a cannon.

 streamdragon wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

I am honestly asking this:


Is there a game as long running as Warhammer Fantasy Battle, with close to as many updates, that has actual balance for all units? I would posit that is almost an issue of time as much as anything else.

How is the number of editions relevant? Every time that GW brings out a new edition, they have the opportunity to address the balance issues. Every time that GW re-releases an army book, they have the opportunity to address the balance issues.

That after these many editions and this many years, their end result is the two worst commercially available miniature games in the world, is a true testament to the incompetence of their rules writers and game developers.

Because they have 30+ years of units to try to balance? Finding balance is easy when you're talking about a handful of things. When you're talking about how many armies with how many units though? Hence my question. Is there a game, older than most of its players, that has something resembling perfect balance amongst its armies, and amongst units within said armies?

Also, lol @ underlined.

Couldn't you say the exact opposite, though? They've had 30+ years to balance the game and the units, but have failed spectacularly.
If you gave someone 30 years to work the kinks out of their system, wouldn't you expect the system to be amazing, or at least have better than bare minimum functionality?

 streamdragon wrote:


Because they have 30+ years of units to try to balance? Finding balance is easy when you're talking about a handful of things. When you're talking about how many armies with how many units though? Hence my question. Is there a game, older than most of its players, that has something resembling perfect balance amongst its armies, and amongst units within said armies?

WH doesn't have that many units to try and balance. That is a fallacy that is constantly thrown around but has no basis in the truth.

A Warmachine faction has almost double the amount of choices than a WHF faction has, for example. Malifaux and Infinity have pretty comparable numbers as well. And I won't even reference the sheer enormity of choices in FoW.

All of those games have much better balance than WHFB.

 streamdragon wrote:

Also, lol @ underlined.

Lol at whatever you wan't, anyone that has a minimum of experience outside of the GW universe will tell you the exact same thing. GW WHFB and 40k are the worse rules systems in the market.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

Because they have 30+ years of units to try to balance?
.

Except that isn't the case.

I mean, I know those Fimir and Chaos Dwarves have always been tricky to nail down, but essentially the only units needing any balancing should be anything that slipped the net the Edition they were introduced, and decent play testing should keep that to a minimum.

That's assuming a professional, structured approach to the game design process, of course.

It doesn't take 30 years to balance a cannon.

Every time they introduce a new unit or a new (universal) special rule, they have to (ideally) look back over the old stuff and see if it's still "balanced" with the latest update. You see FFG doing this with X-Wing now, where the TIE/Advanced is getting an update because it's fallen so far behind. But X-Wing has 3 factions (one of which is less than a year old) with a handful of ships each (some of which cross faction lines). Not even close to the numbers that GW has with WHFB. That's my point. As you add more variables (e.g. units, rules, change in the main rules, etc) the complexity of balance becomes higher and higher.

Like I said, it was an honest question. I certainly have never played all the war games out there, so if there is another 30ish year old game (I assume there has to be at least one) with something approaching the variety in WHFB, I simply don't know about it.

I don't want to sound like I'm excusing crappy writing of rules, I'm not. I was responding to the idea that any game, not just WHFB, should always have perfect balance. Comparing WHFB to X-Wing and saying "See? FFB gets how to balance a game!"* is neither a fair comparison, or even a true statement.


*I am aware no one in this thread has made this comparison. I am simply using it as an example.

 kodos wrote:

Warhammer, "mass fantasy battle" game still has the same core rules which are from a skirmish game. There are a lot of rules taken from an old edition which are not needed and instead of simplifying things, warhammer gets more complicated.
To many special rules are another problem. Instead of different game play, we just get "good" armies with a lot of special rules and "bad" armies with less special rules or the same amount for more points.

That's the problem. Despite many revisions of the rules, the core has never changed and it's been cludged together with 8 updates and endless special rules. Each edition seems to answer some questions and generate more new ones rather than actually tightening up the rules.

For instance, Infnity 2 is a vast improvement over infinity 1, and is pretty balanced. Malifaux 2 is a vast improvement over Malifaux 1, and is pretty balanced. Why does it take Warhammer 9 editions (or 30 years) to approach that level of clarity and balance? Because they aren't interested in the rules as anything other than a mini selling system.

WHF really needs a good reboot, but I doubt GW has the staff to do that now, so we'll see a reboot done on the cheap that manages to address almost none of the problems.

 streamdragon wrote:
Is there a game as long running as Warhammer Fantasy Battle, with close to as many updates, that has actual balance for all units? I would posit that is almost an issue of time as much as anything else.

That is the exact opposite of how it should work. Iterative design should mean your product gets better, not worse.

Gah. The biggest issue is that a statline should cover 99% of a unit's 'special abilities', reflected in the numbers. Having special rules for everything is clunky, slow and makes balancing harder. Special should be special, by exception, not the norm.

As others have pointed out, usually fewer editions is a sign of lesser balance. Getting things right the first time is almost impossible, so you expect second and third editions to clean up balance issues and tweak things. I particularly remember people describing Infinity as "a good game, but definitely feels like a first edition game.'
It is true that more variables => more difficulty in balancing, but unless you are mixing up the variables every time it shouldn't get harder over time. That is to say, if you start from scratch each time it should still get easier as you have experience with the system, and if you don't start from scratch but add new units it should get easier unless you are adding new units at a high rate. Entirely new unit types/rules will make it harder, throwing in monstrous cav type stuff for instance, but if new units follow a template that already exists it shouldn't be harder.

In any case, when you work on a game that is nominally the same for 30 years and still can't make it work right, your process is horribly flawed. Whether it is because you can't design well, you have too much turn over, you tried to make a skirmish set play mass battles or whatever, there is something deeply wrong. Probably 2-3 somethings, at least.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Gah. The biggest issue is that a statline should cover 99% of a unit's 'special abilities', reflected in the numbers. Having special rules for everything is clunky, slow and makes balancing harder. Special should be special, by exception, not the norm.

I think one of the issues here is that because they started with a fairly abstract system that used stats in several different ways, its hard to go back and make the stats reflect special abilities. For instance, instead of Always Strikes First, you could just make High Elves have very high Initiative. But Initiative has also been used (at various times, not familiar with the current edition) for things like escaping combat, or as a stats test for avoiding certain spells and abilities. So by boosting the average HE Spearman to I8 or something, you actually give them a number of connected powers.

At this point, it might really be better to go back and tear down the system and then rebuild it around some core concepts (opposed WS vs WS and S vs T, modifiable armor saves, LD checks for combat resolution, etc.) with a different number scale and system of modifiers. Then you could get away from the 1-10 scale (in practice more like 2-8) and have stat ranges that allow for more gradation and differentiation between units.

The other problem with the profile is that some stats are useless if they are in the middle.
Doesn’t matter if your weapon skill is 4, 5 or 7. Against a weaker target you only hit on 3+ and against a stronger one on 4+.
Using the whole scale from 2-6 would be better than just adding re-roles to hit (which is very strong if everyone else just hit on 4+)

One improvement would be using the whole profile scale from 1-10 with and tables that are using 1-7 (automatic success and fail)

 streamdragon wrote:

Every time they introduce a new unit or a new (universal) special rule, they have to (ideally) look back over the old stuff and see if it's still "balanced" with the latest update. You see FFG doing this with X-Wing now, where the TIE/Advanced is getting an update because it's fallen so far behind. But X-Wing has 3 factions (one of which is less than a year old) with a handful of ships each (some of which cross faction lines). Not even close to the numbers that GW has with WHFB. That's my point. As you add more variables (e.g. units, rules, change in the main rules, etc) the complexity of balance becomes higher and higher.

Like I said, it was an honest question. I certainly have never played all the war games out there, so if there is another 30ish year old game (I assume there has to be at least one) with something approaching the variety in WHFB, I simply don't know about it.

I don't want to sound like I'm excusing crappy writing of rules, I'm not. I was responding to the idea that any game, not just WHFB, should always have perfect balance. Comparing WHFB to X-Wing and saying "See? FFB gets how to balance a game!"* is neither a fair comparison, or even a true statement.


*I am aware no one in this thread has made this comparison. I am simply using it as an example.

Warhammer has a lot of different Armys and Units, but not as maney as other games has.
There is more difference in gamyplay with more different Army Lists in 1 Flames of War Faction than in whole Warhammer and they are balanced (not perfectly but better than Warhammer)

And Warhammer is not a game with a lot of synergies like Warmachine/Hordes, were every single model needs to be balanced (there are 100+ mercenary models/units which need to be balanced against to whole game because otherwise one faction would get a big advantage)

Kings of War now nearly has the same amount of armies with more different units than warhammer and now running a public test to get the lists balanced (because they don't have the resources to do so).


Some years back when I was part of an very active tournament team (7th edition) we made test weekends with every new army book at the moment it was released
It took us just a view minutes to find the rules which needed a FAQ or were broken and a view hours of play testing to prove that our theory crafted army lists were really overpowered and what house rules the next tournament needed to get the new army in line with the others.

AlexHolker wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:
Is there a game as long running as Warhammer Fantasy Battle, with close to as many updates, that has actual balance for all units? I would posit that is almost an issue of time as much as anything else.

That is the exact opposite of how it should work. Iterative design should mean your product gets better, not worse.

While I agree with your post, I would also argue GW isn't doing actual iterative game design. When they updated the rules to 8th, for example, they didn't update all the army books as well. (Though you'll get no argument from me if you say they should have.) When they release a new army book, they don't also update all the other army books against it (which is how we see the divide between similar units of the various elf armies, for instance). Unless I'm misunderstanding the meaning of iterative design? (full disclosure: I'm not a game designer)

kodos wrote:The other problem with the profile is that some stats are useless if they are in the middle.
Doesn’t matter if your weapon skill is 4, 5 or 7. Against a weaker target you only hit on 3+ and against a stronger one on 4+.
Using the whole scale from 2-6 would be better than just adding re-roles to hit (which is very strong if everyone else just hit on 4+)

One improvement would be using the whole profile scale from 1-10 with and tables that are using 1-7 (automatic success and fail)

I agree with pretty much all of this. Having a stat scale of 1-10 where some of the numbers don't matter, and the variation in stat doesn't reflect in the dice is definitely a starting point for change.

kodos wrote:Warhammer has a lot of different Armys and Units, but not as maney as other games has.
There is more difference in gamyplay with more different Army Lists in 1 Flames of War Faction than in whole Warhammer and they are balanced (not perfectly but better than Warhammer)

And Warhammer is not a game with a lot of synergies like Warmachine/Hordes, were every single model needs to be balanced (there are 100+ mercenary models/units which need to be balanced against to whole game because otherwise one faction would get a big advantage)

Kings of War now nearly has the same amount of armies with more different units than warhammer and now running a public test to get the lists balanced (because they don't have the resources to do so).

Thank you for this; it basically answers the question I posited in the first place. Like I said, I haven't played every game out there.

@the Kings of War thing, you will get no defense from me for GW's lack of communication with its customers. None.

kodos wrote:
Some years back when I was part of an very active tournament team (7th edition) we made test weekends with every new army book at the moment it was released
It took us just a view minutes to find the rules which needed a FAQ or were broken and a view hours of play testing to prove that our theory crafted army lists were really overpowered and what house rules the next tournament needed to get the new army in line with the others.

I have, multiple times on these boards, been critical of GW's apparent lack of real-world play testing (as opposed to their very loose with the rules play testing). Please do not take my posts to be, in any way, excusing of GW pushing out terrible rules. My criticism of 40k orks and nids was both vocal and done with my wallet.

So we agree, if GW is not able to balance the rules on their own
a public test would be help a lot, but GW is to afraid to lose money if they give away free beta-rules (and no one will buy the old books of course)

Someone mentioning Kings of War 2nd Ed getting a public beta as a result of Mantic not having resources to test it deeply internally... The irony is, Kings of War even prior, and without a public beta, has been massively better balanced then it seems WHFB ever was. :-p

I love GW games, and love their product despite them never necessarily treating me well as a consumer, but in terms of their rules writing ability, they are just horrid. I play 40k, for example, for the fluff, for the size of the community, etc... but I could (and have) written/published more immediately functional and successful rules any day of the week. :-p

 SilverDevilfish wrote:
Sounds like it's just more stuff being rolled on to an already existing rumor ball. Wouldn't be surprised if most of it's BS.

Lalalalalalala Rumari Damacy.

This is too true! Thanks for the laugh and the sig line!

 CT GAMER wrote:
The best thing ever associated with the WHFB setting was the Mordheim game.

Anything that moves this bloated mess of a game more towards that is a good thing, and it might just get me buying fantasy models again after many, many, many, many long years...

+1.

Mordheim was great for the 18 months it lasted. I never understood why it wasnt made into a series, with the town of mordheim being replaced by an abandoned dwarf hold, chaos warrior temple or lizardmen city (which was partly attempted with the lustrian town cryer). It could have gone on idefinately, and had great potential to sell cardboard terrain etc. Most importantly, a game could be played in 2 hours from unpacking to fully packed.

I could go on and on about what a great concept the mordheim concept was, but unfortunately gw clipped it.

WHFB as it is now is bloated, unbalanced, boring and is so clunky it makes 40k look elegant.

 kodos wrote:

Warhammer has a lot of different Armys and Units, but not as maney as other games has.
There is more difference in gamyplay with more different Army Lists in 1 Flames of War Faction than in whole Warhammer and they are balanced (not perfectly but better than Warhammer)

And Warhammer is not a game with a lot of synergies like Warmachine/Hordes, were every single model needs to be balanced (there are 100+ mercenary models/units which need to be balanced against to whole game because otherwise one faction would get a big advantage)

Kings of War now nearly has the same amount of armies with more different units than warhammer and now running a public test to get the lists balanced (because they don't have the resources to do so).

Just to point out one thing that War/Hordes and Kings of War don't have to the degree WHFB is unit upgrades and options. A Warmachine unit might have a single unit attachment that modifies it and that is it. A WHFB unit might have a slew of equipment and special upgrades. A chaos warrior unit has four different marks to choose from, four different weapon options, shields or no shields, and several different magic standards to choose from. That is over a hundred different combinations that need to be checked and balanced against. That doesn't even take unit size into consideration. You are probably seeing GW moving to units like Blight Kings and Warmongers just to minimize the amount of variety they have to balance against.

 silent25 wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Warhammer has a lot of different Armys and Units, but not as maney as other games has.
There is more difference in gamyplay with more different Army Lists in 1 Flames of War Faction than in whole Warhammer and they are balanced (not perfectly but better than Warhammer)

And Warhammer is not a game with a lot of synergies like Warmachine/Hordes, were every single model needs to be balanced (there are 100+ mercenary models/units which need to be balanced against to whole game because otherwise one faction would get a big advantage)

Kings of War now nearly has the same amount of armies with more different units than warhammer and now running a public test to get the lists balanced (because they don't have the resources to do so).

Just to point out one thing that War/Hordes and Kings of War don't have to the degree WHFB is unit upgrades and options. A Warmachine unit might have a single unit attachment that modifies it and that is it. A WHFB unit might have a slew of equipment and special upgrades. A chaos warrior unit has four different marks to choose from, four different weapon options, shields or no shields, and several different magic standards to choose from. That is over a hundred different combinations that need to be checked and balanced against. That doesn't even take unit size into consideration. You are probably seeing GW moving to units like Blight Kings and Warmongers just to minimize the amount of variety they have to balance against.

Those are almost meaningless choices though. The decision to take your 40 chaos warriors with shields and MoT vs two hand weapons and MoK changes the role of the unit somewhat, but they are still warriors of chaos and they still preform the role of being hard hitting, sturdy infantry.

Now look at Khador iron fang pikemen. They only have 2 options, their unit leaders. You can give them a regular officer and standard bearer or the black dragon officer and standard. They both have the ability to offer a +4 to your units armour for a single turn but one adds extra movement and the other makes them immune to knock down and stationary effects. That has significantly more impact on the game than a 6+ ward save vs an extra attack does because of the way the game is designed to synergize. With caster A immune to knockdown might be meaningless but a speed buff with the extra movement could assassinate a caster who thought they were far enough back to be safe. Then with caster B the extra speed is wasted but immune to knockdown will make them immune to certain enemy abilities, and with other buffs from caster B they become hard to kill and even harder to get past.

And, best of all, both are very good options but there is no clearly better choice (well, people will have their favourite that they swear by but it's a personal preference.)

 silent25 wrote:

 kodos wrote:

Warhammer has a lot of different Armys and Units, but not as maney as other games has.
There is more difference in gamyplay with more different Army Lists in 1 Flames of War Faction than in whole Warhammer and they are balanced (not perfectly but better than Warhammer)

And Warhammer is not a game with a lot of synergies like Warmachine/Hordes, were every single model needs to be balanced (there are 100+ mercenary models/units which need to be balanced against to whole game because otherwise one faction would get a big advantage)

Kings of War now nearly has the same amount of armies with more different units than warhammer and now running a public test to get the lists balanced (because they don't have the resources to do so).

Just to point out one thing that War/Hordes and Kings of War don't have to the degree WHFB is unit upgrades and options. A Warmachine unit might have a single unit attachment that modifies it and that is it. A WHFB unit might have a slew of equipment and special upgrades. A chaos warrior unit has four different marks to choose from, four different weapon options, shields or no shields, and several different magic standards to choose from. That is over a hundred different combinations that need to be checked and balanced against. That doesn't even take unit size into consideration. You are probably seeing GW moving to units like Blight Kings and Warmongers just to minimize the amount of variety they have to balance against.

Having more options doesn't necessarily mean that the game can't be balanced. Infinity has loads more options that WHFB and yet is probably one of the most balanced games I have ever played. The strength of the game on the tournament scene is testament to this, you don't need 'comp levels'

The difference is that they spend months exhaustively playtesting new units and listen to the fan community, see the tournament results about what needs balancing.

WHFB isn't balanced because the rules haven't been written all at once and as a holistic/unified design, so you get numerous styles of rule and power levels from different authors.

 streamdragon wrote:
Because they have 30+ years of units to try to balance? Finding balance is easy when you're talking about a handful of things. When you're talking about how many armies with how many units though? Hence my question. Is there a game, older than most of its players, that has something resembling perfect balance amongst its armies, and amongst units within said armies?

An understandable point of view, but not entirely true. If you have been in the buisnes for 8 editions, you should have developed a pretty damn good feeling of what is ballanced and what is not. There should be guidelines, unit-building tables, formulas and a buttload of experience.
Yes, if you start a new game and introduce 500 units to it, you'll not get it ballanced for years. But WHFB grew organically over time, so there's plenty of time to iron out the faults and get really good grip on the power levels of whatever you want to make. I am not a competetive player (and not a WHFB player at all, I'm just hanging around in case 9th will be a complete change to a manageable skirmish level) so I can not judge how good the ballance in fantasy is. Looking at those 300 S6 shots with a threat range of "all the table" on the most mobile platform in the game from the latest Eldar codex I'll risk the opinion that no, GW can't ballance a brick on a floor if their life depended upon it.

 silent25 wrote:
A WHFB unit might have a slew of equipment and special upgrades. A chaos warrior unit has four different marks to choose from, four different weapon options, shields or no shields, and several different magic standards to choose from. That is over a hundred different combinations that need to be checked and balanced against. That doesn't even take unit size into consideration. You are probably seeing GW moving to units like Blight Kings and Warmongers just to minimize the amount of variety they have to balance against.

Which makes sense in a skirmish game, but in a mass battle game you shouldn't be mucking about with the armament of your warriors in such minute detail, especially when it has minimal impact on the unit/game itself.

Loads of other mass battle games don't allow that level of detail and work fine.

 Kosake wrote:
If you have been in the buisnes for 8 editions, you should have developed a pretty damn good feeling of what is ballanced and what is not. There should be guidelines, unit-building tables, formulas and a buttload of experience.

This is very true. It seems like the game designers at GW knows what balanced is and choose at times to make things completely imbalanced on purpose. Hence when HE came out, and they were a good hard counter to WoC and DoC, which were pretty powerful at that point, but didn't seem to be completely over the top (minus maybe the Banner of the World Dragon). But, the DE get released and are one better than HE in almost every instance.

Then you get Dwarfs and WE, which can compete, but didn't get anywhere near the love those other factions that seem to be more "loved" by the designers.

Then, when it transitioned into End Times, the designers seemed to be able to do whatever they wanted to boost up the factions that "inspired them" while throwing balance out the window and not even touching any of the forces of order (minus KFA of course).

In reality, it doesn't even seem like they are trying to build a balanced game in the past couple of years. Sure, many tournament players say that it is the most balanced it has been now that most books have been released under 8th Ed, but that is when you include the comp that goes with a typical tournament (no special characters, nerfing big spells or adding look-out sirs and so on).

 triplegrim wrote:

 CT GAMER wrote:
The best thing ever associated with the WHFB setting was the Mordheim game.

Anything that moves this bloated mess of a game more towards that is a good thing, and it might just get me buying fantasy models again after many, many, many, many long years...

+1.

Mordheim was great for the 18 months it lasted. I never understood why it wasnt made into a series, with the town of mordheim being replaced by an abandoned dwarf hold, chaos warrior temple or lizardmen city (which was partly attempted with the lustrian town cryer). It could have gone on idefinately, and had great potential to sell cardboard terrain etc. Most importantly, a game could be played in 2 hours from unpacking to fully packed.

I could go on and on about what a great concept the mordheim concept was, but unfortunately gw clipped it.

WHFB as it is now is bloated, unbalanced, boring and is so clunky it makes 40k look elegant.

The thought of GW taking the best elements of the scenario/skirmish style of Mordheim and combining it with their current level of models/terrain kits is something that has great potential.

You have my attention GW, don't screw this up...

Page after page of discussion about the quality of rules writing. Not so much in the way of rumour discussion. :/

 triplegrim wrote:

 CT GAMER wrote:
The best thing ever associated with the WHFB setting was the Mordheim game.

Anything that moves this bloated mess of a game more towards that is a good thing, and it might just get me buying fantasy models again after many, many, many, many long years...

+1.

Mordheim was great for the 18 months it lasted. I never understood why it wasnt made into a series, with the town of mordheim being replaced by an abandoned dwarf hold, chaos warrior temple or lizardmen city (which was partly attempted with the lustrian town cryer). It could have gone on idefinately, and had great potential to sell cardboard terrain etc. Most importantly, a game could be played in 2 hours from unpacking to fully packed.

I could go on and on about what a great concept the mordheim concept was, but unfortunately gw clipped it.

WHFB as it is now is bloated, unbalanced, boring and is so clunky it makes 40k look elegant.

That's why the fans took it and ran with it.

Look for Empire In Flames, as well....

You won't be disappointed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Charles Rampant wrote:
Page after page of discussion about the quality of rules writing. Not so much in the way of rumour discussion. :/

Theres a rumor out there that there will be bundle terrain, and that theres going to be some new buildings and ruin sets...

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-new-warhammer-fantasy-terrain-system.html

 jonolikespie wrote:

Those are almost meaningless choices though. The decision to take your 40 chaos warriors with shields and MoT vs two hand weapons and MoK changes the role of the unit somewhat, but they are still warriors of chaos and they still preform the role of being hard hitting, sturdy infantry.

Now look at Khador iron fang pikemen. They only have 2 options, their unit leaders. You can give them a regular officer and standard bearer or the black dragon officer and standard. They both have the ability to offer a +4 to your units armour for a single turn but one adds extra movement and the other makes them immune to knock down and stationary effects. That has significantly more impact on the game than a 6+ ward save vs an extra attack does because of the way the game is designed to synergize. With caster A immune to knockdown might be meaningless but a speed buff with the extra movement could assassinate a caster who thought they were far enough back to be safe. Then with caster B the extra speed is wasted but immune to knockdown will make them immune to certain enemy abilities, and with other buffs from caster B they become hard to kill and even harder to get past.

And, best of all, both are very good options but there is no clearly better choice (well, people will have their favourite that they swear by but it's a personal preference.)

Again, you are just having to balance two options on a unit. You can either bring A or B in a play test game. With WHFB you could play a dozen different play test games and still not cover all the options.

And they are not meaningless choices, in a game with D6's +1 has a huge swing on rolls. Plus having played against all flavor of Chaos Warriors, the marks make a huge difference turning the unit from a defensive type to an offensive type. A dozen Khorne warriors with Halberds and Standard of Swiftness is a fast moving kill unit where as a Nurgle block with shields is study defensive unit meant to take a charge, hold and allow you set up counter-charges. Or if you are in a magic heavy environment, you go Tzeentch and the MR banner for improve ward.

And yes, not scrapping the army books and trying to keep them backwards compatible hurt WHFB more than it helps. They should have done a ravaging hordes list at the start of 8th like at the start of 6ht, but of course we see all the gnashing of when army books are made obsolete.

As for actual rumors. Via Darkpignouf onWarseer:

Hello everyone .

I don't know if the following information as been revealed yet because I just don't read the 26 pages of posts , sorry !

Just coming back from my local store following some strange message on facebook and inviting us to pass by .

9th edition will be released on saturday the 13th of june .

My local store is organising on friday the 12th a warhammer tournament beginning at 8.00pm for thoses who will have reserved their 9th edition rule book ( If I correctly understand there will be 2 weeks of preorder )

At 0.00 , He will give to players their books .

Il will be a 8th edition tournament but the local manager will release a summary of the changes if they are not to numerous in order to play in 9th edition . If it changes too much , he says that it will be a 8th edition one ^^

Considering the policy of games workshop , I don't think that will be some local initiative , so other people might have the same level of information to confirm .

And translated announcement on that store's FB page (store is in France):

“The sun will set, tainting the sky in ruby and blood

The chosen ones will regroup in the heart of the sanctuary, bringing with them hopes of their kind.

They will fight for glory, for honor, one step from the abyss….

The weaker will fall in the abyss while the stronger will be acclaimed….

Then they will fall too, victims of their own pride until only one survives, shining in glory, bathing in the blood of his own nation, deaf to pleas of dyings while he will claim what he deserves, eternal champion made king in the middle of the night, supreme lord in those devasted lands, nocturne king acclaimed by the ghosts of his enemies…until dawn….

May the forge been turning night and day, may prophets examine the future, may your armies gathered around your banners.

Prepare yourselves mortals !

Because I am KHORNE! The blood lord ! The archi commander ! The war builder !

You are my guests ….come into my arena . RULES HAVE CHANGED ! PREPARE YOURSELVES !!!!!!”

Not sure I like the sound of this.....

I could see the arguments for 'there's loads of options so it's hard to balance' if it actually seemed like the put a modicum of effort into attempting to balance it, but it doesn't seem that way at all. Also, the weapons options don't seem to have changed much over the years so they've had plenty of time to get it right.

 CT GAMER wrote:

 triplegrim wrote:

 CT GAMER wrote:
The best thing ever associated with the WHFB setting was the Mordheim game.

Anything that moves this bloated mess of a game more towards that is a good thing, and it might just get me buying fantasy models again after many, many, many, many long years...

+1.

Mordheim was great for the 18 months it lasted. I never understood why it wasnt made into a series, with the town of mordheim being replaced by an abandoned dwarf hold, chaos warrior temple or lizardmen city (which was partly attempted with the lustrian town cryer). It could have gone on idefinately, and had great potential to sell cardboard terrain etc. Most importantly, a game could be played in 2 hours from unpacking to fully packed.

I could go on and on about what a great concept the mordheim concept was, but unfortunately gw clipped it.

WHFB as it is now is bloated, unbalanced, boring and is so clunky it makes 40k look elegant.

The thought of GW taking the best elements of the scenario/skirmish style of Mordheim and combining it with their current level of models/terrain kits is something that has great potential.

You have my attention GW, don't screw this up...

When has gw ever been able to live up to potential and not screw up the implementation? I doubt this will be any different compared to the last 15 years. Unjustified hope is dangerous!

 silent25 wrote:


Again, you are just having to balance two options on a unit. You can either bring A or B in a play test game. With WHFB you could play a dozen different play test games and still not cover all the options.

And they are not meaningless choices, in a game with D6's +1 has a huge swing on rolls. Plus having played against all flavor of Chaos Warriors, the marks make a huge difference turning the unit from a defensive type to an offensive type. A dozen Khorne warriors with Halberds and Standard of Swiftness is a fast moving kill unit where as a Nurgle block with shields is study defensive unit meant to take a charge, hold and allow you set up counter-charges. Or if you are in a magic heavy environment, you go Tzeentch and the MR banner for improve ward.

Because the lists need more testing, GW don't test them at all?

 Kirasu wrote:
Unjustified hope is dangerous!

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

 silent25 wrote:


And translated announcement on that store's FB page (store is in France):

“The sun will set, tainting the sky in ruby and blood

The chosen ones will regroup in the heart of the sanctuary, bringing with them hopes of their kind.

They will fight for glory, for honor, one step from the abyss….

The weaker will fall in the abyss while the stronger will be acclaimed….

Then they will fall too, victims of their own pride until only one survives, shining in glory, bathing in the blood of his own nation, deaf to pleas of dyings while he will claim what he deserves, eternal champion made king in the middle of the night, supreme lord in those devasted lands, nocturne king acclaimed by the ghosts of his enemies…until dawn….

May the forge been turning night and day, may prophets examine the future, may your armies gathered around your banners.

Prepare yourselves mortals !

Because I am KHORNE! The blood lord ! The archi commander ! The war builder !

You are my guests ….come into my arena . RULES HAVE CHANGED ! PREPARE YOURSELVES !!!!!!”

Not sure I like the sound of this.....

This sounds a lot more like some form of board game (similar to the Assassins one that just came out) and a lot less like a new edition of WHFB. Or, if anything, this is what the new skirmish game premise could be. But, I still have my money on anything skirmish related being connected to the whole Haven thing with Araloth and company.